I tell my students that writing is all about revision. All writers’ drafts are crap at the outset, and it’s only through careful, astute revision that strong writing emerges. But what is revision? One thing it’s not is proofreading; correcting spelling and grammar mistakes, changing a word here and there, maybe adding a sentence are all final steps in the writing process, and jumping directly there from drafting is to leave out the part that involves the real work. That work—revision—is like radical surgery, the kind involving amputations, resections, grafts, and reconstructions. And when you’re performing such procedures on something you love…well, it can be difficult.
Difficult but
necessary. And the best way to approach the task is without emotion. Yes, you
may have worked hard to write that particular scene, but that doesn’t change
the fact that it might not help the story and therefore needs to go. The same
might apply to a character you happen to like. Or the narrative point of view.
Every great novel has its phantom limbs, which are felt most keenly by the
person who did the messy business of removal—the author. My own approach to
revision is best summed up by a line from my favorite movie: “it’s not
personal…it’s strictly business” (if I have to name the movie, then I don’t
even know what to say to you), and I’ve been repeating this line to myself ad nauseum over my winter break, which
I’ve spent cutting and slashing material from my book, trying to get it down to
a reasonable fighting weight of about 100,000 words. It’s slow going, but not
because of the emotion; revision is hard work even without that.
So with all this
said, I’m presenting another installment of my “Frequently Asked Questions.”
One caveat, though. These short
pieces might not be the “sneak previews” as originally billed; they may very
well end up being deleted scenes.
Without further
delay, here is today’s question:
“What
Did You Eat?”
Lots
and lots of crap.
When I told people
that I was going to bike cross country, alone, they pictured vast expanses of
nothingness where I’d have to dig for water and forage for meals. I have to
admit that I’d pictured a little of this myself. Chopping wood for a fire,
clambering down rocks to get water from a reservoir, cooking up a nutritious
gruel made with whatever roots and berries I could scavenge.
But I never cooked
a thing while on tour.
The vast majority
of my food came from gas stations or grocery stores with names like “Piggly
Wiggly,” “Ingels,” “Loaf ‘n’ Jug,” “Shnucks,” and “Harris Teeter” (I thought
that this last one, when I first saw it, was an upscale furniture store).
Also, I didn’t
carry a lot of food with me.
In the morning I
would eat and drink leftovers from the night before. A bottle of Vitamin Water,
a banana, maybe half a bagel. Throughout the day at various stops, I would load
up on the same and indulge every now and then.
I went through a
Milky Way phase in Kansas and switched to Three Musketeers in Tennessee. About
90% of my gas station stops resulted in the purchase of a cherry pie. The
Hostess version had better icing, but the Little Debbie ones were cheaper and
came in a box that kept them from being crushed in my overstuffed handlebar
bag.
In Arizona I
discovered the single greatest beverage in the history of beverages: The
Vanilla Rockin’ Refuel from Shamrock Farms. Sweet nectar from the heavens. In
addition to taste, it had everything I could hope for in a road drink: calcium,
vitamins, fat, sugar, and a shitload of calories.
And then there
were Clif Bars. I always had one or two of these tucked away somewhere on my
bike. Unlike so many other protein or meal replacement bars, Clif Bars don’t
pretend to be candy bars, so there’s no chocolaty coating to degrade into a
gooey mess after sitting in my handlebar bag for more than twenty seconds. I
ate so many Clif Bars that I can no longer eat Clif Bars. Just typing the name
makes me a little queasy.
I didn’t carry
food, but I met a few bikers who did. One was a young guy heading from Orlando
to San Francisco. Stashed in various places on his bike were two family-size
cans of vegetarian baked beans, cups of instant mac ‘n’ cheese, cans of soup, a
couple of boxes of rice and beans, a loaf of bread, and a huge jar of peanut
butter. On top of this, he had a small cookset and stove. He was obsessed with
caloric intake and kept to a schedule where he ate five meals a day, making
sure that each one packed at least two thousand calories.
I met another biker who always had a bag of bagels with him. We bunked together one night, and I watched him work his way through half of it. He washed it down with a half gallon of orange juice. "Eating for tomorrow," he said, juice running down his face.
Food was
sustenance, and I’d shovel it in like coal to a raging furnace. But once in a
while it seemed to be something more. A bag of pretzels from a guy named Pete
at a gas station just over the Kansas-Missouri border. A peanut butter and
jelly sandwich from a mom at a scenic overlook in Tennessee. A bottle of water
from a guy named Sam at another gas station, this one in North Carolina.
Whenever strangers stopped what they were doing and gave me something to drink
or eat, I’d feel a little less alone.
I met Alan in the
Ozarks. He was in his late fifties, worked for the forest service in New
Zealand, and was on his way from Astoria, Oregon to Yorktown, Virginia. Our
paths crossed for two nights running. On the first night, I learned about how
his wife had died of cancer, how he’d felt lost after that, and how he found
his way back on his bike. On the second night, I dragged him through
rain-soaked streets to a $4.99 all-you-can-eat pizza buffet. I was in the mood
for some serious eating, and it turned out that Alan was, too. We very nearly
cleaned them out. Between the nine different kinds of pizza, the pasta (with a
choice of marinara or alfredo), a loaded salad bar, and stacks of
crunchy-on-the-outside-chewy-on-the-inside brownies, we racked up over a dozen
plates of food. By the time we were done, our table looked like the wreckage
from a little league team after its end-of-season party. We shared some of the
stories from the road and our lives in that brightly lit booth, and in the
morning we would part ways, Alan heading north to St. Louis and me due west to
Chester, Illinois. We never saw each other again—I knew we wouldn’t—but when I
remember our brief friendship, I can still see those steaming platters of
pepperoni pizza, the heaps of salad and toppings, those plates overflowing with
sugar-dusted brownies.
